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Evaluation of Induction Heating

National Oilwell Varco (NOV) is known world-wide for their design, production, and sale of oil and gas drilling equipment. One of the many parts produced is a punch plate used to separate and filter debris during the drilling process. One step in the production of these screens involves spraying a dry powder coating epoxy onto the various steel structures. The structures are currently heated by carrying them through an oven on an automated conveyor system, and then into a spray chamber. NOV currently faces problems with non-uniform epoxy coating due to varied heat distribution throughout the part when it is heated in their ovens before powder coating. We were asked to evaluate induction heating as a method of heating these punch plates.

We have established that the current heating process at NOV could be replaced with an induction heating system. Our team has come up with four ways that induction heating could be implemented: (1) Placing the coil closer to the spray chamber to reduce the cooling time between heating and spraying, (2) Rapidly changing current in the coil during production to produce desired heating patterns, (3) implementing multiple coils of different geometries to get different heating patterns, and (4) predict the cooling based on mass density.

Since this project was found to be a viable option for the company, we determined that implementing it would be beneficial by reducing the required production rate, reduce the rejection rate, and increase the production rate of their heating and powder coating process. Overall, this would help reduce the power, cost, and time it takes to spray these frames with epoxy.